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Those Cheatin' Hearts

By

Nat Hentoff

Updated Sept. 4, 1998 1:57 a.m. ET

C ountry singers excel in songs about "slipping around" or "crossing the line." It's a honky-tonk world of adultery in its ingeniously secluded forms, with a constant obbligato of guilty pleasure -- from overly requited love ("She won't leave me alone till it's too late to go home") to ultimately defiant confessions ("Hell, yes, I cheated, even though it was wrong, but she gave me somethin' I've been missing at home").